I have seen Michigan's future and it is California. Facing a $19 billion - with a "B" - budget deficit, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed paying 200,000 state employees minimum wage.

The good news is their wages will supposedly be adjusted when the budget is passed. The bad news is since you need a two-thirds majority from the Legislature to "take a bathroom break," as the Democratic Party chair put it, that probably won't happen anytime soon.

Given Michigan's budget woes, I'm surprised this hasn't been proposed already. One gubernatorial candidate, Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard, wants a law to reduce public employee wages and benefits so they're comparable to the private sector. Maybe we can kick that idea up a notch.

One problem with this idea? Public employees tend to be more educated than their private sector counterparts, when you average all the McDonald's fry cooks and the MDs. Education often means better compensation or most people would drop out as soon as they get their driver's licenses.

But the basic philosophy of politics is finding simple solutions for complicated problems, even if they're wrong.